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Trade-Ideas: Medtronic (MDT) Is Today's Unusual Social Activity Stock

Editor's Note: Any reference to TheStreet Ratings and its underlying recommendation does not reflect the opinion of TheStreet, Inc. or any of its contributors including Jim Cramer or Stephanie Link.

Trade-Ideas LLC identified
Medtronic (
MDT) as an unusual social activity candidate. In addition to specific proprietary factors, Trade-Ideas identified Medtronic as such a stock due to the following factors:

MDT has 14x the normal benchmarked social activity for this time of the day compared to its average of 1.38 mentions/day.

MDT has an average dollar-volume (as measured by average daily share volume multiplied by share price) of $246.0 million.

Identifying stocks with 'Unusual Social Activity' tends to be a valuable process for traders looking to capitalize on the 'talk of the town' stocks that are basking in far more attention from the StockTwits financial community than normal. Good press? Bad press? It ultimately doesn't matter if it's good or bad if you know how to trade around the sentiment. Certain hedge funds use such data for their proprietary algorithms and it is not uncommon to see shared social sentiment play itself out in a stock's price trend.

Medtronic, Inc. manufactures and sells device-based medical therapies worldwide. The company operates in two segments, Cardiac and Vascular Group, and Restorative Therapies Group. The stock currently has a dividend yield of 2%. MDT has a PE ratio of 15.3. Currently there are 6 analysts that rate Medtronic a buy, no analysts rate it a sell, and 12 rate it a hold.

The average volume for Medtronic has been 3.9 million shares per day over the past 30 days. Medtronic has a market cap of $57.1 billion and is part of the health care sector and health services industry. The stock has a beta of 0.99 and a short float of 0.9% with 2.09 days to cover. Shares are up 1.7% year-to-date as of the close of trading on Friday.

TheStreet Quant Ratings rates Medtronic as a
buy. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its revenue growth, solid stock price performance, impressive record of earnings per share growth, increase in net income and notable return on equity. Although the company may harbor some minor weaknesses, we feel they are unlikely to have a significant impact on results.

Highlights from the ratings report include:

MDT's revenue growth has slightly outpaced the industry average of 3.5%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues slightly increased by 2.4%. Growth in the company's revenue appears to have helped boost the earnings per share.

Powered by its strong earnings growth of 41.26% and other important driving factors, this stock has surged by 36.67% over the past year, outperforming the rise in the S&P 500 Index during the same period. Regarding the stock's future course, although almost any stock can fall in a broad market decline, MDT should continue to move higher despite the fact that it has already enjoyed a very nice gain in the past year.

MEDTRONIC INC has improved earnings per share by 41.3% in the most recent quarter compared to the same quarter a year ago. The company has demonstrated a pattern of positive earnings per share growth over the past two years. We feel that this trend should continue. During the past fiscal year, MEDTRONIC INC increased its bottom line by earning $3.38 versus $3.24 in the prior year. This year, the market expects an improvement in earnings ($3.82 versus $3.38).

The net income growth from the same quarter one year ago has significantly exceeded that of the S&P 500 and the Health Care Equipment & Supplies industry. The net income increased by 39.6% when compared to the same quarter one year prior, rising from $646.00 million to $902.00 million.

The return on equity has improved slightly when compared to the same quarter one year prior. This can be construed as a modest strength in the organization. Compared to other companies in the Health Care Equipment & Supplies industry and the overall market, MEDTRONIC INC's return on equity exceeds that of both the industry average and the S&P 500.